The Moon Always Rising

by Alice C. Early

  “And if you’re given one?”

  “It got you back here.”

  “Lifted me out of slavery.”

  “Last I checked,” he said, “slaves didn’t get big salaries.”

  “Bondage nonetheless.”

  “Of whose making?”

  Boney had moved the flowers and put candles in the center of the table. Everyone took their places, Els and Boney facing Jason and Liz. Jason removed his sunglasses, put his huge pink palms together, and bowed over his plate so quickly that it took Els a second to realize he was saying a private grace. His eyes were as black as his skin.

  “Don’t you ever take off that hat?” she asked as Jason served himself some fish.

  “You really don’t want him to unleash that Medusa hair, Fair Lady,” Boney said.

  They’d finished the Cavalier and the remains of a bottle of Mount Gay. Liz passed around beers, and they bent to their meals.

  In the silence after the bachata CD ended, Boney raised his bottle. “I never thought I’d be sitting here like this again.”

  “To you, Jack,” Els said, “wherever you are.”

  “He is all around you, if you believe it to be so,” Jason said. He replaced his sunglasses.

  She wondered if he was also receptive, or just superstitious. “Do you guys think he committed suicide and his jumbie can’t find rest?”

  “Goddamn local voodoo,” Boney said. “Last thing he said to me when we finished boarding up this place was, ‘Catch you later.’”

  The wind had come up; the candle flames leaned and guttered.

  “What could be accidental about standing on a seawall when the waves are twenty feet high?” Els said. “If you ask me, he certainly was self-destructive.”

  “You got evidence for dat judgment?” Jason lowered his sunglasses and looked at her, his eyes hard.

  “Don’t tell me I don’t know a thing or two about Jack,” she said. “Sometimes I feel as if I’ve moved into his life as well as his house.”

  “You tired a’ you own life,” Jason said, “so you tink you can just appropriate his, like buyin’ a new dress?” He stabbed and ate a chunk of tomato.

  “I think I’ve made this house a marriage,” she said. “An overlay of my life and belongings onto his.”

  “Jack doan marry nobody,” Jason said. “’Specially no jus’ come woo-mon tink she can be some jumbie tourist.”

  “You cheeky bastard,” she said.

  Liz, his eyes gone a shade darker, looked at Jason.

  “Jack belong to he friends and to Nevis,” Jason said. “He ain’t you property to spread you fantasy on.”

  “You clowns are the ones living a fantasy if you think you can waltz in and take over the place in Jack’s name. It’s my house now.”

  Jason stood up and dumped his plate into the sink. He strode to the door and let it slam behind him. Liz followed him. The truck engine started. They were arguing; Els went to the patio to hear them better. Liz’s back was to her but Jason saw her, leaned out the driver’s window, and said, “You wrong, mon. Fust bump she hit, she runnin’ back over there, full a’ stories. She want she adventure at all a’ we expense. Fuck dat.” He gunned the engine.

  “Wait!” Boney raced out of the kitchen. Jason braked at the gate.

  “Sorry to eat and run, Fair Lady,” Boney said. “Gotta catch a ride to town.” He clapped Liz on the shoulder and ran down the drive. As soon as he climbed into the cab, the truck lurched through the gate and rumbled away toward Charlestown.

  Els walked up behind Liz. “Don’t bring Jason back here again,” she said. “I don’t choose to be baited by some ignorant local.”

  “Wrong on two counts, neither ignorant nor local.” He was still looking at the gate. The truck’s dust settled. “Jason saved my life. He’s a fiercely loyal friend.” He looked at her. “Are you saying I can come back without him?”

  “Jury’s out on you,” she said.

  “Will helping clean up improve my odds?”

  “Not helping would banish ye forever.”

  Liz put on James Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim and sang snatches of the songs as he moved about the kitchen with the familiarity and confidence he’d shown on Iguana. Els was tipsy enough to drop and shatter a glass; at that, he told her to sit down and let him take care of things.

  “Our dinners here, back in the day, always ended with a round of darts,” he said.

  “No way,” she said. “It’s half one.”

  “A last bit of old ritual.” He shoved open the storeroom door, releasing the smell of damp earth. “Lot of stuff in here.”

  “My childhood,” she said. “Best kept behind closed doors.”

  He shifted some boxes, pulled a dartboard off the wall, and carried it outside. A bright light came on, and Els stepped out into the glare of a floodlight she’d never noticed before. Shining from the mango tree, it illuminated the kitchen’s end wall and the dartboard, which now hung from a hook driven into the mortar.

  Liz took his position on the grass at the edge of the patio. He twirled a dart between his thumb and index finger and set his bare toe at the edge of the flagstones, the dart poised at his ear. He threw straight and hard, three darts in quick succession popping into the cork.

  “Ton 80,” he said. “Perfect score.”

  “Don’t expect me to kiss you,” she said.

  “You have to lose first.” He sauntered up, extracted the darts, and dropped them into her hand.

  “I’m a total novice.”

  “Captain Liz can fix that,” he said. He took two of the darts. “Step up to that line. No, not over it.”

  She adjusted so her toe was planted where the spongy grass met the stone, held the dart close to her ear as Liz had done, and leaned forward.

  “Leaning ruins your throw,” he said. He stepped behind her, circled her waist with his left arm, and pulled her against his chest. She wobbled and his arm tightened and she leaned against him, feeling his warmth on her bare shoulders. He ran his hand down her right thigh and pressed her leg against his so that she stood with one foot slightly behind the other. His mouth was next to her ear. He curled his fingers around her right hand, leveled the dart, and pulled her hand gently back and forth. “You want to throw straight, not up,” he whispered. He wrapped his right arm over his left, crossing her stomach. She threw the dart. It clicked against the wall to the right of the board and landed on the patio.

  “Captain Liz is naw the teacher he claims to be,” she said.

  “You just need another lesson or two,” Liz said. He released her and she stepped away. The breeze made her miss the warmth of him immediately.

  “Another time,” she said.

  He looked at her for longer than she found comfortable before dropping the darts into her hand. “Another time,” he said, and walked down the drive. A snippet of song she couldn’t identify drifted up to her when he closed the gate and turned toward Oualie.

  CHAPTER 24

  When Finney called from the gate, she was weeding a bed of plants in arresting colors: dried blood, bilious green, acid yellow. She fanned her face with her floppy hat while he labored up the hill.

  “Jack call that his spooky border,” Finney said. “All dem weird plants want the sunniest place.” He set down his bucket. “You gon’ get heatstroke, working so hard this time a’ day.”

  “I can’t bear idleness,” she said. She put the hat on, folding the brim back so it didn’t hide her face. “Only a month ago, Lauretta had this place shipshape. Now just look at these weeds.”

  He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket. “Boat payment day.”

  “You’ll want a receipt,” she said.

  “What for? I got a calendar and I know how to subtract.”

  “A business arrangement based on trust,” she said. “How refreshing.” She looked from the half-weeded bed to the sun that grew higher and hotter by the minute. “My head’s going to pop if I don’t take a break.” She peeled off her gloves and
tossed them into the wheelbarrow. “Hang on while I splash water on my face, and I’ll give you a lift home on my way to town.”

  She sped toward Charlestown, the wind whipping her hair. “A skinny man’s been hanging around, Finney,” she said. “I saw him once filling a gourd bowl at the cistern. A few days ago I found him pulling weeds in the rain and yelled at him, but he ignored me.”

  Finney chuckled. “Pinky reach back.”

  “Pinky?” she said. “He’s black as coal.”

  “Pinky doan speak since he born,” he said. “But he hear fine. He live in de bush, never go to school, but he bright. He and Jack assemble all a’ his pipes and machines, and he help Jack and me build the Maid. He and Jack bin pretty close. When Jack disappear, Pinky go back in de bush.”

  “He gives me the creeps.” After dark, she imagined all manner of eyes, human and animal, watching from the bush.

  “He won’t do you nothing. He observe what you need and he do it.”

  “He left fruit by the door. I’ve discovered bitter orange juice is delicious in rum.”

  “Pinky trying to tell you not to fraid him. You give him a bit a’ food, he become very useful to you. Pull all a’ you weeds. Prevent you drop dead in that sun.”

  “Even if he’s not dangerous, he’s loony enough to weed in the pouring rain.”

  “He know ’bout plants,” Finney said. “You wish to eradicate a plant, you doan try when it holding fast in the soil. It leave roots behind, grow back tomorrow. When it rainin’ and those roots busy drinkin’, you surprise that plant and pull out the whole thing, and it can’t come back.”

  She wondered how one might distract grief enough to yank it out whole.

  “For a fisherman, you know a lot about the psyche of plants,” she said.

  “Got to grow if you want to eat,” he said. “When I ain’t fishin,’ I in my provision ground. Vivian love my tomatoes.”

  They’d reached the cistern at the Westbury Road. “Put me out here,” he said.

  “Nonsense,” she said, and turned into the road. She waved to the pigtailed girl from the shower incident who was sitting on the steps of her house. The girl stared, then waved with enthusiasm when she saw Finney.

  “It just past Josie’s Snackette,” he said. “The light blue with the new patch a’ roof.”

  She pulled over at the gate and pushed her sunglasses into her hair. The dwelling looked as if a wooden chattel house had sprouted a larger concrete box. Where a flamboyant tree cast a patch of shade onto the dirt yard, a woman wearing a cantaloupe-colored dress sat in a wheelchair. The real Nevis, you gotta find on you own, Sparrow had said.

  “My Beauty, we got company,” Finney called. Els followed him through the gate.

  The woman looked in their direction. “You’re early, Husband.” Her right leg was propped on an overturned bucket, a bandage covering the stump, and her hands were busy crocheting an afghan square in primary blue and red.

  “Miss Els give me a drop.” He leaned in to kiss the woman; their kiss was a beat longer than perfunctory, reverent. “She wish to say hello.”

  The woman sat straighter and smoothed her hair toward the bun at her nape. “What a lovely surprise.”

  “I don’t want to intrude,” Els said. The woman beckoned.

  Els approached and took her offered hand—soft, its grip an invitation to intimacy, the first human touch Els had felt in months that carried affection.

  “I’ve been wanting to meet you, Mrs. Fleming,” she said. “Finney’s that proud of your cooking.”

  “Vivian,” the woman said. Her smile teased out the wrinkles around her eyes, making her look both older and younger at the same time. She had an elegance, prominent cheekbones and almond eyes dusky with cataracts. “Child,” she called toward the house, “bring that baby out here and say hello to our visitor.” A copy of Pride and Prejudice, a long seedpod as a bookmark, sat on a plastic chair near her elbow.

  A young woman appeared in the doorway, a drowsy child on her hip. Els had to look twice to recognize Eulia, who was wearing an African print dress in the colors of a cowrie shell that set off the figure her Resort uniform had masked.

  She crossed the yard and stood behind Vivian’s wheelchair. “So, that jumbie ain’t scared you off yet.”

  “What kind of hello is that?” Vivian said.

  “When that storm finally done, I dyin’ to see my baby,” Eulia said, “but de boss make me cook she something to eat first ’cause she been hidin’ out in Jack’s house all that time.”

  The child pointed his finger and let out a stream of babble. Shame pricked Els. A new mother, trapped serving over-entitled Resort guests while her infant was wanting her at home.

  Els tried an appeasing smile. “And what’s your name, wee one?” She touched the baby’s hand, and he grasped her finger.

  “We call him Peanut,” Eulia said. “He seven months, just about.”

  The baby’s hair resembled brass springs. He peered into Els’s face with a world-weary look, as if an old man lived behind his eyes, which were camouflage green with brown flecks.

  Finney moved the book to the ground and gestured for Els to take the chair. He lowered himself onto the bucket and rested Vivian’s stump across his knees. They all barely fit in the patch of shade and were sitting close enough for Els to catch Vivian’s scent, a mixture of talcum and something herbal.

  When Vivian asked Eulia to bring tea, Els said, “I wouldn’t put you to that trouble.”

  Eulia didn’t move. “Maybe she doan drink bush tea.”

  “Viv ain’t had company in a while,” Finney said.

  “I mean . . . I’d be honored,” Els said.

  Peanut on her hip, Eulia carried Finney’s fish bucket into the house. The door hung open crookedly. The new metal on the roof caught the sun, shining like a scrap of foil. A row of nearly ripe tomatoes lined the sill of a screenless window.

  “Eulia could probably use a hand.” Els stood up. “One of the few things my grandmother taught me was how to serve tea.” But the image that evoked—silver service, cubed sugar with tongs—felt excruciatingly wrong. She went into the house.

  Eulia was in the kitchen, which occupied the entire wooden section of the structure. A pot sat on a lit burner of the old cooker. There was a small fridge with an extension cord running out the window and a handmade table and shelves. Outside the window, a platform held a washing pan and bucket and beyond it a privy and the vegetable garden. In the block section of the house, a bed, dresser, and straight chair, all painted the pumpkin orange common on local fishing boats, stood against whitewashed walls. The bed’s coverlet was appliquéd with a tropical forest scene worthy of Rousseau. Even from the doorway Els could tell the handwork was exquisite. White lace curtains framed all the windows. The sparseness struck her, as if the family’s scant possessions were displayed in a gallery.

  “Someone’s quite the seamstress,” she said.

  “Mamma sew everything—clothes, uniforms, curtains,” Eulia said. One-handed, she arranged mismatched mugs on a tray. “’Til she run over her finger with that machine ’cause she can’t see good enough. She doan like to talk about that.”

  “I didn’t mean to pry,” Els said. “I came to help.”

  “Then take him,” Eulia said.

  Peanut averted his face and Els stepped back. “I’m hopeless with bairns.”

  “You okay with pouring, then?” Eulia pointed at the pan on the stove, which contained a pinkish honey-colored liquid. She gave Peanut a rag to suck.

  Els poured the brew, releasing a vegetal, minty aroma, and put down the pot.

  Peanut flapped the rag. Els stroked his soft hair, and he jerked away. “Your father must be handsome,” she said, “and very proud of you.” Peanut looked solemnly at her.

  “He daddy doan know he exist,” Eulia said. “This baby is all mine.”

  “What, some swine left you pregnant?”

  Eulia turned off the burner. “Happen every day a’ the
week,” she said. “Even in merry old England.”

  Imagining the father as some Resort guest, Els wondered if the union—and issue—had been desired or not. Eulia nuzzled Peanut, picked up the tray, and walked outside, Els following behind.

  With a practiced transfer, Eulia handed Peanut to Vivian. He patted her face until she gently removed his hand. Els returned to her chair. There was a glimmer of mischief in Eulia’s eyes when she extended the tray ceremoniously toward Els and said, “Hope this tea up to you standards.”

  Els chose a mug and cradled it with both hands while Eulia offered the tray to Finney, who wrapped Vivian’s hand around a mug and took one for himself.

  “Welcome to our home,” Vivian said.

  “I love its simplicity,” Els said. “Nothing superfluous.”

  Finney’s smile was wry. “We leave superfluous behind long ago.”

  Els colored, fearing that instead of complimenting, she’d dropped another clanger, and anything further she might say would only make it worse.

  Vivian moved her mug out of Peanut’s reach. “Nothing in there to trip over,” she said. “Or run into.”

  With Eulia watching, Els raised her mug, hesitated.

  “Might taste a little unaccustomed,” Finney said, “but probably work some benefit on you.” He sipped. “What this one good for, gyull?”

  “Fancy company,” Eulia said. She put the tray on the ground, took Peanut, and sat down with him in her lap. “Mamma’s herb doctor friend Miranda mixed different tea bush and hibiscus, what give it that pretty color. She say doan drink it too hot.” She took the remaining mug. “Go on,” she said to Els. “It ain’t poison.”

  Els took a sip. The brew tasted swampy and floral and made her throat tingle.

  “You’ve probably made big changes at Jack’s,” Vivian said.